{"id":501951,"date":"2026-06-30T01:45:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T01:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501951\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T01:45:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T01:45:09","slug":"moana-pasifika-coach-grant-dearns-may-face-charges-over-philippines-student-drownings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501951\/","title":{"rendered":"Moana Pasifika coach Grant Dearns may face charges over Philippines student drownings"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to his LinkedIn page, Dearns held a similar position at the Hawke\u2019s Bay Magpies from 2004 to 2016, the NEC Green Rockets in Japan for the following five years and Russia\u2019s Lokomotiv Penza from July 2021 to March 2022.<\/p>\n

Dearns\u2019 tenure in Hawke\u2019s Bay overlapped with Tab Baldwin in 2014 when he coached the Hawke\u2019s Bay basketball team.<\/p>\n

\"NewNew Zealand strength and conditioning coach Grant Dearns could face charges over the drowning of two basketball players in the Philippines. Photo \/ Grant Dearns, LinkedIn<\/p>\n

His son is Hurricanes player Warner Dearns and Grant said on a Sport Nation podcast he would be in Wellington for the Super Rugby grand final on June 20<\/a>, while Filipino media reported he had left the country on June 10.<\/p>\n

Grant Dearns has been contacted for comment. <\/p>\n

A Filipino immigration spokesperson was reported to have said no lookout bulletin order or hold-departure order had been issued against the coach.<\/p>\n

Ateneo de Manila University student-athletes Rene Baterbonia, 19, and 21-year-old Divine Adili, died during a team-building swimming exercise<\/a> in Dipaculao at the start of June.<\/p>\n

Adili\u2019s body has been returned to Nigeria, while Baterbonia has been buried in his hometown of Talacogon, Agusan del Sur.<\/p>\n

Thomas \u201cTab\u201d Baldwin ONZM was the coach of the university\u2019s basketball team and previously led the Tall Blacks from 2011 to 2006.<\/p>\n

Local police said the players had been swimming in front of a resort and were \u201creportedly carried by a strong current into deeper waters\u201d.<\/p>\n

Baldwin\u2019s military-style \u201cbootcamps\u201d and training tactics had come under fire based on interviews with former team members, while his estranged wife Efi Kalogirou claimed she warned the Filipino university<\/a> \u201cchildren are not safe around him\u201d.<\/p>\n

Kalogirou also claimed she had to \u201cflee away from Tab\u201d to keep her and her children \u201csafe\u201d and the pair had been separated since 2020.<\/p>\n

Baldwin released a pre-recorded message<\/a> about the drownings and claimed staff sent players into what they thought was shallow water, but as soon as \u201cwe realised … they were in dangerous water\u201d, coaches and players did everything to try to take everyone safely out of the water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to his LinkedIn page, Dearns held a similar position at the Hawke\u2019s Bay Magpies from 2004 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61583,26568,8136,1873,1320,124,250595,15166,51029,240129,2837,3248,1872,2740,2347,7810,41654,111,43,139,69,1523,31445,4291,10702,42877,11561,9631,17933,30638,250596,80],"class_list":["post-501951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-baldwin","tag-basketball","tag-blacks","tag-charges","tag-coach","tag-could","tag-dearns","tag-deaths","tag-drowned","tag-drownings","tag-during","tag-exercise","tag-face","tag-former","tag-grant","tag-may","tag-moana","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-pasifika","tag-philippines","tag-players","tag-relating","tag-strength","tag-student","tag-swimming","tag-tall","tag-teambuilding","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}